Regardless of whatever bullshit the officials involve pedal, I’m going to believe this was one of Musk’s toadies trying to sabotage Stephen Miller’s passion project

The thing is, it won’t really because NPR and PBS have plenty of outside funding and will continue to put out great podcasts and videos and other online media that they’re going to keep competing with. Defunding the corporation for public broadcasting is only going to kill tiny stations in rural markets that commercial broadcasters have generally abandoned already anyway because there aren’t enough people there to make for profit media work. The only people this helps are the ones who want to keep rural voters ignorant about what’s going on in the country (which, yeah, benefits these media companies in a lot of ways, but it’s not quite as simple as just killing their competition).

Yeah, I really don’t think it’s anything nefarious from this outlet because they’re actually pretty great with a lot of their headlines, but the general practice throughout journalism and punditry and politics of calling police agencies “law enforcement” and just flatly referring to stuff they do as “law enforcement actions” without interrogating the fact that their “law enforcement actions” are actually breaking the law is a problem

For sure, I tend to be a bit sympathetic to journalists because they have a pretty thankless job and writing quickly about complex events filled with dishonest people pushing bullshit talking points is just always going to be a really hard thing to do really well consistently

But on the other hand what you’re saying is a totally fair criticism, and I’m glad to see it because you’re totally right about the importance of framing and how many bullshit things people in power do gets laundered by being written about in passive voice or as some kind of natural and inevitable outcome instead of as a conscious decision made by real people, and getting push back on it gives journalists at least some basis to change how they do things and say “I’m just responding to what my readers are telling me,” when people accuse them of being biased.

Fair enough, but people are protesting stuff being done by government agents who commonly refer to themselves as “law enforcement officers” and the alphabet soup of all the agencies involved (FBI, ICE, DHS, etc) wouldn’t fit in a headline easily

Nah, more like a quarter on this issue (arc)

Plus, this is going to be extra unpopular with people in rural areas especially, lots of small towns have no news coverage or any kind of media focusing on them besides public stations, so if they go away nobody’s going to tell you what’s going on at the school board or what the score of the high school football game was or other local stuff like that

Between this and the cuts to Medicaid, people in Trump voting country are getting fucked by this administration, and even they’re starting to realize that, which creates an opportunity for taking these fascist pricks down a notch

“He’s brown, they’re brown, whatever. Say thank you and give me money.” - Trump (if he was honest and more coherent)

“You can’t prove that if we delete all of our records!” - Nebraska’s Department of Corrections (basically)

actually fight Hamas instead of the Palestinians as a whole.

You do see how extremely vague this “alternative solution” you’re offering is, right?

I don’t think this is vague at all. Stop doing airstrikes on places that have civilians in them. Send in armed troops instead if shooting one or two Hamas assholes is so important to you, or just drop it and refocus on making your intelligence and security better so October 7 can’t happen again, but either way dropping bombs on places with civilians is never acceptable. “But Hamas [whatever]” does not change that.

e;

I’m extremely sympathetic to the reluctance of going door to door looking for terrorists who are hiding among civilians

Please, at least they have guns and armor and squad mates and medics and it’s infantry v infantry for them, the poor civilian bastards have none of that and are facing a damn air force

“Cool story, still crimes against humanity.” - Nuremberg style tribunal we’ll need to sort all of this out someday

At least they have the option of voting in better judges, Americans like me are just condemned to look at John Roberts stupid face for the next few decades

[The letter from the Tennessee Preparatory Christian School] goes on to read, “Morgan will not comment about the school or people associated with the school. If online slander continues, records of posts and messages will be forwarded to colleges and universities as part of a comprehensive student file. If the above are not adhered to, Morgan Armstrong’s diploma will be withheld and not mailed on June 15, 2025.”

Especially if they can’t give any other examples where use of vulgar and disrespectful language off campus and outside of school hours led to a student being expelled (which is what withholding a diploma is effectively)

Except it’s licensed by the state of Tennessee as an acceptable place to send your kids that won’t have them or you catching a truancy charge. Constitutional protections against government overreach apply to licensed agents of the state in a lot of other situations, not sure why this one should be different.

Censoring ourselves out of fear of what the government might do to us someday is no way to live tho

Fair enough, definitely not trying to say they aren’t going to try to intimidate her or minimize how fucked up they’re being, just saying I think/hope that will be a fight she’ll win in the long run

I feel like before it even got that far she could just go to whatever job or college she’s trying to apply to with a news story about her high school being stupid for proof of education and a few letters of recommendation for proof of character and just skip the diploma altogether

People confuse being a dick to poor people with being “good for the economy”

True, but they were already there anyway

In related news, here’s who he’s in second place to at the moment,

“The ‘Democratic Party’s Own Donald Trump’ Is Getting Another Chance - As Andrew Cuomo emerges as the front-runner in New York City’s mayoral race, several women who accused him of sexual harassment just three years ago say they feel betrayed and forgotten” (arc)